Caris-April2022

Assignment Prompt
This is your final research paper!
The purpose of this research paper is to discover a deeper, more complex understanding of Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West by selecting a particular research focus. This is an argumentative paper that asks you to consider secondary sources (other scholars like yourselves) and how they are in conversation with Hamid’s 2017 novel.

You must use at least two secondary sources, though you are welcome and encouraged to use more if they aid in constructing a rich argument. These sources will come from Rutgers’ library databases, and we will engage in a library research session that will help you find secondary sources.

In addition, you are of course expected to use copious evidence from Exit West. The first step in this process is to decide on a paper topic that is exciting to you. This is where your creativity and your interests come in. How could you use a personal academic interest as a way into Hamid’s novel? Remember the sources you find are secondary, and your primary source is the novel, so start generating claims around Exit West, then using the sources to support, complicate, refute, or offer background to the content you analyze in the novel.

Feel free to use one of my suggestions or come up with one of your own. Exit West considers themes of thresholds, borders, and barriers. In short, this is a text focused on migration and characters who are refugees, migrating through time and place. I think of the quote “when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind” (Hamid 98). How and why does Hamid represent these themes of migration and borders? How do scholars explore and interpret themes of migration in contemporary novels?

Hamid’s novel centers on the complexity of relationships: romantic and familial. There are two approaches to this topic: consider how Hamid represents family in this novel or consider how Hamid represents romantic love in this novel? How do secondary sources respond to representations of familial or romantic love in contemporary novels? What other themes are connected to this topic?

As we have discussed, technology and modernity are key to the characters in this novel, though technology is often broken or flawed in parts of the novel, often the government manipulates technology, especially as it effects the migrant communities. How does Hamid wield representations of technology? How do his representations connect to the magical components in the novel?

Magic! There is a genre of novel writing called magical realism. How could you classify this novel as magical realism; what are elements of that genre? Explore, what you consider particularly meaty magical realism passages in Hamid’s novel? How is Hamid’s text in conversation with both the theory and practice of the magical realism? Remember magical realism manages both magic and realism; consider both those elements in Exit West.

Exit West initially is set in an anonymous city, and yet contains recurring internationalism as it concerns the characters “magical migration.” How does setting function as a device in the novel? What passages reveal certain themes associated with setting? What are those themes? In what ways is this text an urban novel, and how do scholars in secondary sources respond to the placement of urbanity in contemporary novels?

How does Hamid construct time in this novel? Consider the literary devices that allow him to build certain ideas about time. How do the literary constructions of time allow for certain themes to emerge? What do secondary sources say about playing with time in contemporary novels?

Create your own topic! There’s a lot I’ve left out here, and I’m SO open to you developing your own topic or mixing some of the topics above. If you have the seedling of an idea that you are excited about, meet with me in office hours if you are unsure of how to craft this topic. If you have a passage that you love—or some notes from discussion that you are working out—check in with me about your ideas! The research paper begins, fundamentally, with YOUR interests and creativity!